How to Get Free Media Coverage for Your Small Business

Chapter 1: Introduction (00:00)

SHAWNA: As a small business owner, have you ever thought about how you can get media coverage, especially for free, because we don't have big budgets most of the time? Well, if that's been on your mind, I have a great guest for you today. She is Barbara Scofidio, and she is an editor with Skift Meetings. Was Skift ever, like, an actual magazine? Like, a printed...

BARBARA: No, it started online and has always lived online. It's globally distributed, with an incredible global team.

SHAWNA: Yeah, and you've been with them for how long?

BARBARA: Going on 2 years.

SHAWNA: I remember when you transitioned. We were in New York together around that time. But how long have you been in media?

BARBARA: Oh my goodness, since college. I'll try not to give my age.

SHAWNA: 10 years?

BARBARA: I would say 30 plus.

Chapter 2: Barbara's Background — Media Veteran & Small Business Owner (01:00)

SHAWNA: Nice, that's cool. You've seen some things, Barbara. You have owned a small business. Tell me about that.

BARBARA: I have, and I think that's a good fit for your topic. Certainly I can speak from my professional career, but for 12 years, I owned a retail business that started with one store and ended up with four. And it did that while I worked my full-time role, and really, probably because of my background as an editor, we were very successful at winning awards, getting into Yankee magazine, and the Boston Globe. We had, at one point, a store on Charles Street in Boston, and a store in Concord, Massachusetts, and Groton, which is where it started.

SHAWNA: Wow, while you're working full-time. So you understand the overwhelm that happens when you have to wear all these different hats.

Chapter 3: Why Marketing Must Be Your #1 Priority (02:19)

BARBARA: If I were to back it up a little bit, it's so easy to get granular — to live in the details when you own a small business. Often you're bogged down with the paperwork, and the accounting, and in our case, the inventory. We had 150 local artists, New England artists, that we had to track their inventory. The day-to-day, the staff, payroll, cash flow — the biggest cause of death of small businesses. A lot of small business owners think that marketing is where they can cut their effort. But actually, for me, marketing was always one of my top priorities, because in retail, you had to keep people coming in the door, so you had to keep being creative. Promoting, creating events, trying to get into the papers, creating relationships with the editors of those papers so they thought of you. We created, in our store in Concord, an entire business group that started doing events right in our town to grow awareness that there were so many great businesses right in the town. So it's also about collaborating with — in some cases — people who were your competitors, but to kind of drive the business for all of you.

Chapter 4: Collaborating with "Competitors" (04:21)

BARBARA: There's so much noise on people's feeds, and people are so busy. And now in retail, why even shop retail if you can sit on your sofa at night with a fire crackling and a glass of wine and shop? It's gotten a lot tougher. I don't understand businesses that don't make marketing as a group a priority. Because then you've got all the lists from all of the different businesses, all the goodwill those individuals have created over time, and the social media presence of all the businesses. It's just so much more powerful to do it that way.

Chapter 5: Building Relationships with Editors (06:46)

BARBARA: When I had the store, I became friends with the editor of the local paper. It wasn't intimidating to me to reach out, but you have to keep trying — they're busy. You have to find different ways of connecting. Perhaps that means attending a local business association meeting where they'll be, if they're not answering you by email or phone. Find a way to get in front of them and build that relationship. Because once I had it, she was lovely, and she asked me at one point if I would write a column about local business and thinking local first.

Chapter 6: LinkedIn — The Most Underused Tool for Media Visibility (10:32)

BARBARA: A lot of people only post on LinkedIn when they're attending an industry meeting, or will only reach out if they met you at that meeting. They don't try to keep posting regularly about trends they've seen, or something really cool that they've done, so that they get in front of customers. One of the biggest rules — and this applies to job hunting, too — don't go silent for years and then the minute you need something, suddenly appear in front of them. It's not the same as them seeing you all along.

Chapter 7: How Often to Reach Out + Creating Events for Press (12:46)

BARBARA: We created regular events specifically to have a reason to have something written. I've been involved in other ventures. The town I live in did a town-wide art exhibit for all local artists. We made it such a splash. We had a coffee table book that we put together about all the artists. It was really just a two-week event, but we did all of these other things around it — interviews with the artists, the different galleries that hosted different openings. You turn it into something specifically for the purpose of getting that press.

Chapter 8: Press Releases — What Works and What Gets You Deleted (17:20)

BARBARA: The thing about press releases is, if it's of interest, I'm going to pursue it. But when people send me things about topics that have nothing to do with our audience — and especially with a lot of PR agencies sending press releases about things that aren't relevant — that creates a really bad vibe for the future. If it's interesting, I'm going to call you. They should not call up and say, "Just checking in." We read everything. We are looking for leads.

BARBARA: Case studies in general — rather than a product pitch — an actual story of a company that has done something really creative: always interested, without question.

Chapter 9: AI-Generated Content — Why Editors Spot It Instantly (21:30)

BARBARA: A lot of people are using AI — I can spot AI instantly, and I do have a lot of trouble with it. It's a great starting point, it's a wonderful tool, but if you're writing something, it had better be creative and have care put into it. If I see something that looks like it was just pushed out without any care — there are little things you can look for. We're all getting very smart around identifying that flowery language.

SHAWNA: I actually uploaded a list to my own GPT and said, do not use any of these.

BARBARA: Very smart.

Chapter 10: Handling Negative Media Coverage (23:34)

BARBARA: I think it's really important to get in front of whatever it is, and to be honest, and to admit if there's something that went wrong. I had a situation years ago — I had a speaker who said something offensive. We reported on it, and the person was furious with us. I got on the phone with him and said, how can I make this right? It slipped by me — it wasn't anything that I did, but I hired that speaker, whole responsibility. I wrote an apology. I just bumped into him at a meeting a couple of weeks ago. He was so friendly and sweet. Own it.

Chapter 11: Awards as a Marketing Strategy (25:06)

BARBARA: For certain kinds of businesses — and in our case, retail — it meant a great deal. With Yankee Magazine, I had pitched the editor various stories; he was aware of the store. At some point, he sent a writer there to evaluate us, and we ended up winning Best in Massachusetts for Artisan Gifts one year.

BARBARA: There are so many lists out there. Even if they're someone's blog — "5 Great Things You Can Do in Massachusetts," in my case. If you know they're writing things like that and you can fit in there, reach out and say, "Hey, I love your column. Here's what we do. Come see us." They're looking for ideas, too, and they might not be aware of you. The whole idea is making people aware of you, and being relentless in your pursuit of new ideas. Look for lists you can be on. Create a list!

Chapter 12: Wrap-Up (28:42)

BARBARA: If you get too buried in the minutiae of your business, and it's a very comfortable place for a lot of people, you don't have the time to be looking at a much bigger picture. Your business isn't going to be there for you to track people's hours and do the accounting if you don't get the customers. So the marketing has to be a top priority. Stretch yourself. If you don't have the confidence to reach out to someone, find it — because that is how you grow your business.

SHAWNA: Barbara, thank you so much. So insightful. As always with you, it's so interesting, and we end up talking about things we didn't even expect. I appreciate you. Thanks for taking the time.

BARBARA: Thank you, Shawna. Appreciate it.